


Shock Treatment: You're Gonna Fly

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [41]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: At a concert, Childbirth, F/M, Gen, Oops Collared infamous song works its evil magic again, on stage in fact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 04:24:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Then there was the time Molly went into labour. On stage. While playing That Song. And she had a panic attack about being a terrible mother. And then Sherlock got annoyed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shock Treatment: You're Gonna Fly

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a lyric from Reba McEntire's You're Gonna Be. The song's about the singer's baby, but here it's as much for Molly as the coming twins.
> 
> The jinxed song, Cry for Help, is by Shinedown but has been press-ganged into service as an old Gladstone's Collar song. Things go wrong when it's played. Armed terrorists. Golf balls. Charging bovines. Babies arriving a bit early.

Greg Lestrade stood behind his wife at the stall, arms wrapped around her rounded belly, one hand pressed to her side. His face was a picture postcard of wonder.

"He's a little wriggler, that one," he said, grinning.

"He's not the only... oh! Here goes the other one!" Molly grabbed Greg's other hand and placed it on the other side of her belly, and Greg's grin got, if anything, more ridiculously huge. He rubbed his hand soothingly over the babies shifting in her womb and kissed the back of Molly's neck.

John, used to this kind of display from the pair of them, finished his financial transaction with a customer (which had included signing his name on the Collared CD itself) and gave Molly a searching look.

"You don't need to go up today, Molly, if you’re not feeling up to it," he said. 

"Don't be silly," she chided him, "I’m fine. The babies aren't even due for another three weeks."

"Babies. God," Greg gently rubbed her ripely swollen stomach again, "We don't do things by halves, do we?"

Molly giggled. "Mr Virile."

"I thought I was DI Hot."

Molly giggled harder. "You are."

"Would you two stop that," Sherlock managed to sound both bored and disgusted. "Aren't you meant to be selling CDs? Something about the greater good, wasn’t it? _Won’t someone think of the kiddies_?"

Which was true. Collared was due on the stage in another hour as part of the whole fundraising day, but they were in a marquee selling their CD to help raise more cash for the Metropolitan and City Police Orphans Fund while other acts were performing. The CD was selling well – Collared already had a bit of a reputation, musically. The CD’s pictures of the band members looking a bit saucy in animal collars didn’t hurt, either.

The cover sported the five of them, standing in a laughing row, leather collars at their throats. The back and inside of the covers had pictures of them individually, looking in varying degrees sultry (Molly and John) or amused (Greg and Tad) or haughty (Sherlock). John, Sherlock noted, still found it both funny and awkward when people - women mainly, but not exclusively - wanted him to sign his picture. Sherlock always declined such requests, but the rest of them seemed to find it fun.

Molly just wrinkled her nose at Sherlock, a teasing gesture just short of sticking her tongue out at him. Sherlock only barely suppressed the urge to stick his own out back at her.  Sometimes it still surprised him, how her former flighty nervousness in his presence had given way to this playfulness. The first time she ever did it, his first instinct was to hate it, and then he had to stop and assess why it just made him quirk a hastily suppressed grin instead. It wasn't until John teased him about it later that he realised that Molly was teasing him too, but not in that hideous, mean way he'd learned to loathe while growing up. Molly and John teased him... affectionately, he supposed was the word. They all did.

Sherlock liked it, but he didn’t like them to know it. It was bad for his image. He knew they knew anyway. Despite himself, he liked that too.

Greg hugged Molly closer to his chest and just grinned at Sherlock. "Don’t be a lazy prat, then, and sell some yourself. You're quite a hit with the punters, you know." Greg nodded at some young women at the end of the table who were looking at the cover, then at Sherlock, then back at the cover with expressions that Sherlock found annoying bordering on alarming.

"Boring."

"Then bugger off. I'll canoodle with my wife and babies if I want to."

"You don't have babies yet."

"Yes we do," countered Greg, "They're still in their gift wrapping, that's all."

Sherlock's slightly nauseated look intensified, and Molly laughed at him. "One day you might be a parent and you'll get it."

"That's hardly likely," said Sherlock disapprovingly. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a slightly wistful expression on John's face, as though he thought it was highly unlikely for him too.

At that moment, Tad sauntered up to the table, bearing a cardboard tray filled with cardboard cups of terrible tea (very possibly also made of cardboard, thought Sherlock grumpily), and one of soft drink for Molly. "Time for the warm-up," Tad announced, handing around the beverages, "Colin will be here in a minute to look after sales."

Colin, from Accounts in Scotland Yard, arrived a few moments later and Tad showed him the ropes while the others waited.

"You're sure you're all right to play today?" John asked again.

"Stop fussing," said Molly.

"You said this morning you'd had some pains."

"I’ve had two false alarms in the last fortnight, and nothing but wriggling today. My doctor said I'd get false starts once or twice. That's all they are. Even allowing for there being twins, they're not due for... oh!" Molly squeezed her eyes shut then opened them again. "That was a strong one. Little tykes seem to think they're swimming laps!" Then she grinned at the pun. "Swimming laps," she repeated, stroking her fingers from one side of her belly to the other.

"That’s not your lap,” said Sherlock.

“Shut up, Sherlock,” was the unanimous reply.

When they finally got to the stage, they took a minute for Molly to arrange herself at the keyboard. They'd already worked out during rehearsals how to set her instrument up higher and angled down, so that she could reach the keys more easily. Molly gasped a little, but waved John away when he asked after her.

A little reluctantly, he let it be. Doctor he may have been, but John wasn't a gynaecologist. Not much call for delivering babies in Afghanistan, though he'd presided over one or two births between his internship and one eventful afternoon at a mountain village on patrol one year. Still, Molly knew her own body and had been over this whole thing with her own doctor, and she didn't seem worried - so John let it go.

And it went fine. She had a few moments when the lap-swimming babies obviously caught her by surprise, but she made it through the first half of their short set without missing more than a few notes. Three songs down, three to go.

When they launched into crowd favourite _Cry for Help_ , though, it was another matter entirely.  While experienced Collared fans hooted about golf balls and cows during the intro, the first few bars went without a hitch. They launched into the first verse, all crackling energy and were moving into the first bridge, when, half way through, a hitch began to manifest itself.

Molly's hands fumbled the keys, and that may have gone unnoticed by anyone except the band, except that she uttered a sudden, surprised _'Oh!_ ' into the microphone and stumbled away from it.

Greg's bass stopped immediately and he held his hands out to steady her, and then Sherlock's violin and John's guitar halted at the same time, and a second later Tad's drum stuttered to a standstill, and into the sudden silence, Molly's faint, slightly panicky voice was picked up by the nearest mike.

"Oh, god. My waters just broke."

 John shifted immediately into Medical Crisis mode, shimmying off the guitar (handed blindly to Sherlock ) and striding across the stage. He helped Greg to hold Molly carefully and lower her to the ground – “Hey Molly, it’s fine. It’s all fine. Just breathe. That’s it, like you practised, you’re doing really well, Molly. That’s it.” He arranged Greg to sit up behind her – “Like you did in the birthing classes, that’s it, Greg. _Breathe_.”

In between reassurances, John issued commands in a firm and steady voice: turn off the power to the mikes and instruments; call an ambulance; clear the stage; set up a screen of some kind.

Tad and Sherlock worked like a well-drilled team (a memory that would later surprise Tad a lot and Sherlock not at all). Tad cleared the audience away, sent two of them off to fetch the blankets from the stand-by medics who always attended public events like these.

In minutes he’d jumped back onto the stage to affix the blankets to mike stands at one corner, and then to act as another cornerstone to the blanket wall with Sherlock, facing out to the audience, backs to the commotion going on behind them.

Molly’s breath came in shocked pants, small whimpers escaping her. Greg was sitting behind her, holding her hair back from her face, saying in a voice strangely high pitched in his anxiety: “Hang in, baby, hang in there. You’re doing great. You’re doing just great. Remember what the nurse said. Breathe, you know, big pants.” He demonstrated helpfully and Molly shrieked a little.

“Molly,” came John’s calm, steadying voice, “The ambulance is coming but I need to see what’s happening with the babies.”

Her answering squeak was upwardly inflected.

“Everything’s fine, Molly. It’s all pretty textbook so far,” he reassured her, as though he did this all the time, “But I want to help a bit before the paramedics arrive. That means I’ll have to remove your underwear. If that’s all right. Is that all right, Molly?”

Another sort of screech, and Greg’s arms closed convulsively around her. “Come on, Molly, baby, let John take care…”

Before he’d even finished, Molly was nodding frantically.

Sherlock and Tad kept their eyes on the crowd. Between them, their fearsome glares were keeping the rubber-neckers at bay. The on-site first aid medics had made it through and ducked behind the blanket screen to assist John.

“You’re doing so well, Molly,” they heard John say behind them, “That’s it. Breathe. Like Greg’s showing you. Excellent. Feet up there. You’re doing well.” He made comments about dilation and there being no sight of a baby yet, no need to panic, the ambulance would be right here, any minute, breathe, breathe…

The contractions seemed to subside, because in the next moment Molly found her voice.

“Oh god. _Oh my god_. What am I _doing_? I’m not _ready_. Greg, **_I’m not ready_**! I can’t do this! I deal with dead people, Greg. _Dead people_ who _just lie on the table_ and they _don’t need anything_.”

“It’s okay, Molly.”

“ ** _It’s not okay_**!” her voice was rising more and more in a panic, “This is the _other end_ of dead. This is babies. They _breathe_! _They need things_! **I don’t know how to do this**! I don’t know how to have babies. Oh god, Greg, what have I done?”

Greg was talking rapidly, encouragingly, but seemed too near panic himself to do much good. John in contrast was professional and calm, telling her that babies happened every day, that she would be fine, she’d be a great mother. Tad just went pale and clutched onto the orange blanket, though he managed to choke out: “You’ll be fine, Molly. You will. Fine. Just fine. Just.” Then he tried not to hyperventilate.

Molly’s anxiety wasn’t listening to a single word.

“Oh god,” she keened, “This is going to be a disaster.”

"Oh, don't be ridiculous, Molly." Sherlock’s deep, brusque voice cut through all the other noise and rendered a shocked momentary silence out of all of them. “You’ll be fine,” he added into the lull.

" _How do you know_?” Molly wailed, “I might be _awful_. I might be a _terrible_ mother."

Sherlock bit down an irritated sigh. With his eyes raised heavenward, he said over his shoulder: “I have seen terrible mothers, Molly, of all shapes and sizes, and you are nothing like any of them.”

“You’re just trying to make me feel better.” Her voice began hitching again, as the contractions began to fire some more warning shots.

“Yes, because I’m so well known for my social niceties,” Sherlock said in a scathing tone. It was as well he couldn’t see the thunderous look on Greg’s face.

“Molly,” Sherlock continued crisply, “I am a detective. It’s my job to know things. I know that you had organic muesli for breakfast. I know that you were painting the nursery last night.  I know that you are a competent scientist. I know that you are stronger than you think you are. I know you can be trusted absolutely, and that you're kind, when very few people are. You are not going to be a terrible mother, and you’re not becoming a parent all by yourself. Wherever you have weaknesses, Greg will be there, and he has sufficient excellent qualities on his own for parenthood. So stop panicking. It's annoying."

For a few minutes, the only response was a steady panting.

And then: “Okay,” in a strangely teary but oddly determined tone, “Okay, I can do this. You’re right. I can. We can. We can do this, Greg.”

“You bet we can, baby. We can absolutely do this.”

Then back to the panting, rhythmic and pitched with pain (and empathy pains) but steady. Exactly like they’d learned at the pre-natal classes.

A very short time later, the ambulance arrived and the paramedics took over. Tad and Sherlock maintained the blanket wall for privacy while John gave a rapid-fire sit-rep and saw Greg and Molly into the ambulance.  

John stood with Sherlock and Tad, watching the vehicle move off, siren blaring. Everything would be fine, he knew. Absolutely and one hundred per cent fine. Even though his jeans were soaked through with birthing waters. He’d been soaked through with much worse in his time, and with nothing quite so promising for the future, come to that.

"We’re never playing that song again,” he said after a moment, “It's jinxed.” He cast a warning glare at Sherlock. “Shut up,” he said, “I know there’s no such thing.”

Sherlock arched an eyebrow at him, then looked down at the orange blanket still tangled between his fingers. He glanced to the right, where Tad was still watching the space where he’d last seen the ambulance, looking shell-shocked. Sherlock draped the bright orange cloth over Tad’s narrow shoulders.

Tad clutched the blanket close across his chest before realising  what it was and staring at it with mixed irritation and bemusement. Then he grinned at John and Sherlock.

“We’re going to be uncles.”

“We’re not actually related…” Sherlock began.

“Shut it, Sherlock,” came the reply in stereo, but they were all smiling.

Because things, indeed, were all going to be fine. Absolutely, one hundred per cent, gilt-edged _fine._


End file.
